


Evolution

by SOABA



Series: The Chronicles of Evolution [1]
Category: Kong: Skull Island (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Conrad, BAMF Weaver, Body Morphism, Evolution, F/M, Titan Mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:53:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21587173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SOABA/pseuds/SOABA
Summary: Mason is injured grievously in the final fight and so, to repay the debt he owes her, Kong takes her deep into the Hollow Earth, to the very source of his strength. Skull Island may be hell itself, but Conrad will be twice damned if he leaves his photojournalist behind."I got lost in him, and it was the kind of lost that's exactly like being found."Claire LaZebnik
Relationships: James Conrad/Mason Weaver
Series: The Chronicles of Evolution [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555846
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47





	Evolution

**Author's Note:**

> Exposing oneself to radiation will not give one superpowers - in other words, don’t try this at home folks.
> 
> This was my second story concept for Keira Marcos’ July 2019 Rough Trade. Finally got it all put together in a coherent way. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Remember, non-consensual concrit is BAD people and I will delete it without bothering to respond; I write fanfic for my own amusement, first and foremost.
> 
> Dedicated to all the Minions out there; you know who you are ;). Thanks for being such an awesome and inspiring community.

**_Evolution_ **

Before him was his greatest nightmare made real.

There was blood in the lake; expansive clouds of vital crimson that billowed outward and morphed into an ominous shade of dark yellow as their edges diluted in the water. Although he was perfectly cognizant of the fact that even the most minor of injuries could result in what seemed to be excessive blood loss, Conrad was not able to use the knowledge he had gleaned in his earliest years as a soldier to prevent his heart from leaping into his throat at the sight, not when it was _her_ blood. Nor did said awareness hamper his immediate determination to reach the spot where Mason had struck the water so that he could pull her the fuck out of it.

Having abandoned the corpse of the Skull Crawler, Kong got to where Mason had fallen in before Conrad could, plunging his massive fist into the murky depths and then drawing it back up mere seconds later, fingers tentatively wrapped around precious cargo. Kong uncurled his fingers and Conrad momentarily froze in horror as he caught sight of the sheer grief present in the eyes of Skull Island’s protector - there could only be one reason for it.

“No,” Conrad breathed, scrambling up onto a boulder high enough that he could see Mason, lying supine in Kong’s palm, and the large, jagged rock that was sticking out of both her abdomen and her back. It had pierced straight through her stomach. “ _Mason_!”

Even if advanced medical help had been just around the corner, instead of half a world away, Mason’s chances of surviving such a grievous wound would have been almost non-existent. 

The only thing Conrad had cared about effecting, at least from the moment that the helicopters had crashed onward, had been a self-appointed mission. Namely, to ensure that the brave, stubborn, and beautiful photojournalist with the big heart made it out of the hell they were trapped in and back to safety - back to where she could take her magical, evocative pictures and continue to make the world a brighter place through the sheer force of her tenacity - and he had failed spectacularly. Mason Brienna Weaver was going to die and there was nothing Conrad could do to stop it from happening.

Conrad sunk to his knees, all the strength and resolve which had burned so spectacularly through his veins only minutes before sapped from him in an instant. He had known there was a possibility that he would be unable to get Mason off the island alive, had considered that it might be the death of her, but he had also been so sure that the only way such a thing could occur was if _he_ had gone first - that was how it should have been, Conrad giving his life to safeguard hers.

And, yet, the woman he loved was bleeding out and he was still breathing.

“No,” he whispered, unable to do anything more than that, “ _Please_ , no.”

Kong grunted then, a strangely decisive sound, and reached out to Conrad with his free hand, his palm facing the sky. Almost lost in his desolation, Conrad looked up at him and was startled to see the fierce level of intent in Kong’s expression. Kong crooked his fingers once at Conrad, a universal signal that could not have been misconstrued even by a child; how Packard had ever considered Kong to be nothing more than a mindless beast was inconceivable.

An insane and frenzied hope punctured the suffocating veil of Conrad’s misery and he climbed up onto the proffered hand without a care for the consequences.

Kong rose to his full height, lifting Conrad and Mason up above the treetops as he did, even as Slivko shouted in alarm, “Captain!”

“Get to the north side of the island,” Conrad ordered, pointing for emphasis, “Get everyone else the hell out of here, Slivko!”

“But what about you?” Marlow protested. “The boat’ll leave and you’ll be trapped here!”

“You never would have left Gunpei behind,” Conrad replied as Kong began to move, “I can’t leave her!”

The last Conrad saw of Hank Marlow was an expression of profound understanding sliding over his weathered countenance. Conrad hoped the older soldier finally made it home, that he got to meet the son he loved so dearly despite his absence from the boy’s life, that he got to experience the simple joy of a cold one and a hotdog while watching the Cubs win a game at Wrigley Field. Conrad hoped he would be happy.

After the others were out of sight, Kong carefully shifted Conrad into his other hand where Mason was breathing laboriously. Ignoring the path Kong was walking, Conrad stripped off his shirt and knelt down, carefully lifted Mason into his arms. He made certain to position her so that her injury would not be made worse as they travelled through the thick jungle and painstakingly pressed his shirt against her wound in order to slow the loss of blood as much as possible. He did not dare mess with the rock impaled in her stomach - no matter what Kong had planned for her, if Mason had any chance of survival then it had to stay where it was.

“James?” Mason’s eyelashes fluttered against the pale skin of her face and her voice was infused with confusion and pain.

“I’m here,” Conrad said as he stroked her hair, the words an oath, “I’m here, love, and I will never leave you. It’s going to be alright.”

He was, quite possibly, certifiable for the faith he had in Kong, but it was all that he had left. Faith was all that stood between him and the inevitable fate of a broken man.

“Love you,” Mason murmured before slipping back into unconsciousness.

Conrad told himself that it was for the best that she sleep - Mason would be in considerably less pain if she remained near insensate for the duration of their trek - but the panic was still difficult to keep at bay. He moved the hand not pressed against her bloody stomach away from her hair so that he could grip at her wrist, his fingers fixed upon her pulse point. Every single twitch of her veins was sancroscant to him, no matter how minute.

Only once they were in the thickest part of the jungle, where the trees towered above even the King of Skull Island, did the destination that Kong had in mind become apparent to Conrad. After brushing aside the thick curtain of ivy that hid it from the outside world, Kong stomped into a large cavern - his den, judging by the thick pallet of leaves and vines and assorted other foliage that was situated near the entrance. Conrad assumed that their journey was at an end, but Kong’s pace remained steady as he moved them further into the cave and toward what appeared to be a tunnel at the very back of the space; a tunnel that slanted downward in dramatic fashion.

A mere three steps inside and Conrad could no longer see a thing - if he had not already been before, he was then entirely reliant on Kong’s mercy as they descended into what Randa had called the ‘ _Hollow Earth_ ’. 

After several long and agonizing minutes of travel through the blinding darkness, Conrad realized that he could make out Mason’s shape once more and, when he managed to tear his gaze away from her to investigate, that there was a distant source of light growing ever nearer to their mismatched group. Another minute more and he could tell where the light was coming from, though the discovery astonished him - crystals, orangish-gold in color and grouped together in tight clusters, were emitting the warm glow from where they jutted out of the tunnel’s walls and ceiling. Though they started out small and dim, the crystal clusters progressively became larger and brighter as they moved deeper, and the surrounding temperature rose to match.

By the time Kong burst out into a chamber ten times bigger than his den, the air was sweltering and Conrad had come to the unnerving conclusion that he and Mason were being heavily irradiated.

A pool of lazily swirling golden water lay before them and, rather than stopping at the edge of it, Kong marched straight into the steaming liquid. Conrad inhaled sharply and instinctively clutched Mason closer - if the radiation did not somehow heal Mason, it would likely kill them both - but he did not protest Kong’s actions. Whatever happened, he and Mason would be together.

Kong’s fingers created a cage around the two of them without warning and they were thrust down into the pool, submerged totally before Conrad could pull more than a shallow breath of air into his lungs. Automatically, he began to fight against Kong’s hold, pushing and kicking out against Kong’s fingers in vain - they might as well have been made out of titanium for all the good that Conrad’s struggling did him.

Mason jerked wildly in Conrad’s lap and he lost the precious little air that he had taken in as he watched the metamorphosis her body was being subjected to with a kind of petrified awe. The rock protruding from Mason’s stomach and back crumbled to dust and the terrible wound she had sustained began to knit itself closed as the golden water flowed through it, regenerating flesh and muscle in seconds. Conrad just managed to witness her caramel colored hair begin to shift in hue, starting from her roots and spreading, before he began to seize as well.

His vision blurred so drastically that he was almost completely blind and every inch of his body felt as if it were on fire as the liquid of the pool worked on him too, _changing_ him from the inside out. The sharp odour of the radiation - something like chlorine but different - mellowed, the scent of the earth after a rainstorm invaded his nostrils instead, and the water in his mouth became sweet to the taste even as his lungs and brain burned. He managed to keep his hold on Mason’s wrist and that was the only thing that made the painful process bearable, his connection to her, his North Star, especially when his back split open and something literally _sprouted_ from his shoulder blades.

“ _Be calm,_ ” a new voice urged him, echoing through Conrad’s mind as if a gong had been struck with considerable force. “ _You alright. Be calm, little brother._ ”

And then the song began, an ancient ballad of the Earth and the Sky and the Titans they created to defend all their children from evil. The rumbling tune painted vivid pictures across Conrad’s thoughts, images of the long peace and then the arrival of the monster from the deep dark, which had brought unprecedented levels of turmoil to the world. After many years of battle and loss, the Kakodaimōn, as it came to be known, was finally buried in a land of everlasting winter and the Titans split into groups to keep its spawn contained in remote corners of the globe. The Earth and the Sky fell silent in their grief, and the children forgot their origins and their protectors, but the Titans remained ever vigilant.

The pain did not so much fade away as Conrad simply forgot to register its existence as he floated and listened and learned. The Gojira - four times Kong’s size at adulthood and, when provoked, capable of breathing out a flame more destructive than an atomic bomb - who lived deep within the planet’s core. The Mosura, they who were the most benevolent of the Titans and who favored bioluminescence as both a weapon and a form of comfort. The volcanic and temper-prone Rodan. The Scylla - the true producers of all petroleum on earth, secreting it like frogs did with mucus so that they could breathe. The mountainous and stubborn Methuselah. The giant serpentine Typhon. The Battra - the Earth’s most relentless defenders. The Mokele-Mbembe, who could stop or alter the flow of rivers as they deemed necessary. The Leviathan, the playful Titans who favored the Lochs of Scotland. The Mapinguary - painfully shy and the source of the sasquatch and yeti mythos. The Kongu, the most empathetic of all the protectors that the Earth and Sky had designed.

At some point, Conrad must have shut his eyes, though he did not realize it until the final chords of the melody had melted into silence and Mason spoke up, her voice clear and strong once more, “James. James, wake up.”

Incapable of ignoring her, Conrad opened his eyes and then gasped in wonder. An angel was hovering above his person and was gazing down at him with such profound affection that only his own devotion to her could rival it in strength. Mason’s thick hair was longer than it had been that morning, cascading to her waist like spun gold and curling at the ends into a shade of effervescent flame. Her eyes appeared to have somehow captured the radiance of the crystals around them and were so beguiling that Conrad imagined he could lose himself entirely within them if he allowed himself to. There was no trace of injury to be found on her skin, but there were numerous tiny patches of golden scales melded seamlessly to the rose beige flesh of her arms, stomach, and shoulders - Conrad rather suspected that various other areas of her body were similarly flecked with shimmering lamina.

And, of course, his angel had wings.

If there was an animal on earth whose wings were at all comparable to Mason’s, Conrad had never heard of it, and even the ones described in the Bible fell short when weighed against _his_ angel’s. At least ten feet wide from tip to tip, Mason’s wings were every shade of red that existed in nature, from the cheerful color of perfectly ripe strawberries to rich carmine to the deep hue of wine, and they arched significantly. From a distance, it would be easy to mistake the individual pieces of the wings for feathers that fanned out from a common base due to their shapes and placement, but Conrad could tell without even having to touch that the wings were composed of something else entirely, a something he had no name for - the best he could do was think of them as giant scales, but even that was not a perfect descriptor.

Conrad sat up, noticing and almost simultaneously disregarding the new weight at his back and the alien heat in his belly, so that he could tenderly cup Mason’s face between his palms and tell her, his words no less than reverent, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Mason returned with a smile.

Conrad kissed her, his relief making him giddy, and then pulled her firmly into his lap to deepen the kiss as several strange and wonderful sensations washed over him the moment their lips touched. How had he never before noticed that her lips tasted like candied roses, or her mouth like honey and sweet cream? How had he not realized until that moment that she carried the unique blend of vanilla, cinnamon, and burning apple wood on her skin, a natural and heady perfume? She was divinely intoxicating and, if he could have, he would have kept on kissing her for the rest of eternity, basking in her essence.

Mason eventually ended the kiss to say, “We aren’t human anymore, James. We have _wings_. Your eyes aren’t just blue anymore; they have a glow to them, like really hot fire or a giant star.”

“You were dying,” Conrad revealed, sobering as the reality of their situation intruded upon them. “I would have done anything to save you. I’m so sorry.”

“Why?” Mason scrunched up her nose in confusion.

“I sacrificed your humanity without your consent and robbed you of your chance to escape this place. The ship will be long gone by now,” Conrad explained. Though he could not be certain without going outside to check, he had the feeling that a great deal of time had passed while they were submerged and he had long ago learned to never question his instincts. “You have every right to be absolutely furious with me.”

“You sacrificed your own humanity too,” Mason pointed out, “And you’re stuck here with me. We both know that there’s no way I would’ve made it to the ship alive.” Conrad flinched a bit at that as Mason continued, “You gave up basically everything to _save my life_ , James. How could I possibly be angry with you for that? I never imagined that anyone would ever be so invested in keeping me.”

Conrad thought, not for the first time, that Mason’s parents had been absolute fools who had not deserved to have the treasure she was in their lives, “When Randa recruited me, he made an observation that discomfited me, because it was true and I had spent so long privately denying it. He said that the reason I hadn’t rushed home to peace and stability, like so many other good soldiers did, was because I hadn’t found what I was searching for when I ran off to war - a purpose.” Conrad pressed his forehead against hers as he finished, “I didn’t find it in Randa’s mission or while traversing this insane island or in opposing Packard. I found it in _you_ , Mason. You are the reason I’m here.”

A tear, gold and glimmering, slipped down Mason’s cheek and then she was kissing him intently. Conrad let himself fall back onto the soft clay-like ground, settling Mason’s body on top of his own. Mason pulled away from him just enough to strip what was left of her shirt off and then leaned back down to trail kisses along Conrad’s jaw while his fingers located and unlatched the hooks of her bloodstained bra. He was pleased for more than one reason to toss the previously snow-white cotton article to the side.

There was a slightly larger patch of scales located directly over Mason’s heart and when Conrad rubbed over them with his thumb, slightly surprised that they felt more rigid than the others, Mason shuddered delicately on his lap, her pupils widening and her mouth falling open as she inhaled sharply at the sensation.

“ _Christ_ ,” she breathed out in surprise, “That’s a new one.”

Conrad smirked, probably irrationally pleased with himself, “Sensitive, are we, my darling?”

Her eyes practically sparking with determination, Mason reached around him to press a hand between his shoulder blades. Conrad’s vision almost whited out as a new kind of pleasure cascaded down his spine right to his cock, making him harder than he had ever been in his life. He finally caught sight of his own wings, darker than Mason’s with tints of purple along the tips, as they flapped fiercely in response to the touch at their base and lifted him and Mason a good six inches off the ground for several brief moments.

“I think you should fuck me right now, _Captain_ ,” Mason urged, voice thick with arousal, after they had touched back down.

Conrad wholeheartedly agreed with her.

******************************************************************************

As enhanced as their new eyesight was, their new hearing was even better, and so they both heard Kong coming several minutes before he actually arrived in the pool cavern, which gave Conrad and Mason time enough to disentangle themselves from one another and pull what little clothing had not been destroyed by blood or jagged rock back onto their bodies. Neither of them had shirts of any description, but that was probably for the best, as Conrad had no clue how they would get such articles to even work with their wings.

Kong dipped into the chamber and, though his nostrils flared ever so slightly as he approached them - Conrad was under no illusion that his intimacy with Mason was a secret to the king - he looked pleased to see that they were awake and moving about. Kong himself was no longer sporting any kind of injury, healed by the pool as Mason had been, and his fur seemed to be both richer in color and was far less unkempt than it had been before, as if it had been painstakingly attended to by a long suffering mother.

“ _Little brother,_ ” Conrad heard the words in his head, though his ears had not picked up even the slightest whisper of sound. Kong’s dark eyes met Conrad’s own widened ones for a few seconds before they moved over to Mason’s, “ _Little sister._ ”

Conrad understood then, exactly who had offered the comfort he had been given during his metamorphosis, who had sung to him for hours and hours the sacred truths of the world in order to distract him from the pain he was in. Of course it had been Kong.

“How-” Conrad began, but cut himself off when Kong shook his head at him.

“ _No speak with mouth_ ,” Kong insisted, touching his lips with two fingers for emphasis, “ _Strange sounds only few know. Speak with spirit, like Earth and Sky and Titans speak_.”

The way that Marlow had spoken to the Iwi, Conrad realized with a start. He had thought the behavior odd at the time, but now he saw that it made perfect sense that the humans living on Skull Island would be _more_ , as the rest of its inhabitants were, that they would have learned to talk as their beloved protector did. Marlow had even made mention that the Iwi did not seem to age - a product of the radiation below their feet and that which was infused into their water and food, no doubt.

Since Marlow had been able to communicate with the Iwi, was it not likely that he too had been changed by the island, that he had evolved as well? Conrad found himself hoping, for Hank’s sake, that no government agent ever made such a connection.

Mason figured out how to spirit speak first, “ _Kong? Thank you for saving me._ ”

“ _Little sister save Kong too,_ ” Kong replied, “ _Kong glad little sister live. Glad little brother live._ ”

Conrad wondered then if Kong had been able to perceive just how pronounced the man’s heartache had been when he thought he was going to lose Mason; if Kong had suspected what Conrad’s immediate despondency could have very easily led him to do. Conrad would not have been surprised if Kong had known.

“ _We’re glad that you’re okay_ ,” Mason told him, “ _And we’re sorry for waking the_ _Cranidaimōn up_.”

“ _And for what Packard did to you and your home,_ ” Conrad added.

“ _All over now,_ ” Kong determined. “ _Packard was a bad Not-Iwi. A bad protector._ ”

Kong was not wrong about that, but then Conrad had little use for men who craved war for the acts of violence that it enabled them to engage in, “ _Do you know what Mason and I have become? We aren’t human, I mean, we aren’t Not-Iwi, any longer._ ”

“ _Kong know,_ ” Kong nodded at them. “ _You lost for a long time, stolen from Earth and Sky by Kakodaimōn. Little brother and little sister are Titans, like Kong._ ”

“ _And, what kind of Titans are we, exactly?_ ” Conrad asked.

“ _Little brother and little sister are Phoenix._ ”

*****************************************************************************

_Nine Months Later_

After a long three and a half months, the rainy season had finally come to an end, which meant that Conrad and Mason could once more leave the den to collect food and fresh water without having to risk becoming drenched by a sudden storm or deal with avoiding the places where the mud and muck were the thickest. They both had developed an instinctual and immediate aversion to the rain, which Conrad thought had to be a byproduct of the fire that lived in their bellies - swimming and bathing were not a bother, but then, he and Mason could control when they did those things; the water cycle was not nearly so accommodating.

Kong had found it hilarious, the way that Conrad and Mason became so disgruntled whenever water started to pour down from the sky, but had also been not-so-secretly pleased that for several months his little brother and sister had stayed in the den, or very close to it when they did venture out, where they were safest. Kong did not approve of how they liked to wander and explore their new home, even after they had promised to stay far away from the graveyard that served as the lair for the smaller Cranidaimōn, and often followed them when they did. After everything was said and done, none of them had ever considered Conrad and Mason living somewhere else on the Skull Island besides the den; they visited the Iwi on occasion, but Kong was like them - a Titan - and so they belonged near him.

There was, unfortunately, a distinct reason why the conclusion of the rainy season was not entirely so wonderful a thing.

“James,” Mason’s voice was low and urgent as she carefully set her grass-woven basket of pacay up on a log.

“I can hear them,” James told her, placing his own basket next to hers and then shifting into his second skin - impenetrable golden scales that covered pretty much every inch of his body - in less than a second of time. His wings extended to their full length, popping out from the slits in his back where they could be folded into at will.

Ants, hundreds of them, swarmed over a nearby hill and rushed at the pair, pincers at the ready in their eagerness to consume the first meal since before their hibernation. Each the size of a golden lab and covered in black and orange fur, even one was extremely dangerous to a human thanks to its speed and vicious bite; an adult ant could strip a child down to the bone and it would only take two or three of them to finish off an adult.

Of course, Conrad and Mason were no longer human and that particular group of ants was destined to never have their first meal.

Conrad took a deep breath and then exhaled blue flame into his palm, holding it for a moment before sending it hurtling toward the ants like a missile, incinerating more than two dozen and injuring even more. The ants began to scream in rage, a sound far less pleasant than the ones they used to mimic the native birds, and redirected themselves solely toward him.

Mason was ready for that, using her golden-orange fire as a pair of whips that sent the ants at the front of the group flying backward in pieces. Conrad summoned more of his own fire and willed it into the shape of a sword before launching himself over the ants to swipe out at the ones in the middle. Even if one could have made it past his blade of flame, biting him would have done them no good thanks to his scales.

The skirmish was over in minutes; Conrad and Mason made sure to carefully cremate all of the giant ants so that their yellowish-green blood did not seep into the ground and poison the pacay plants.

Adrenaline racing through his veins and a bit high from the victory, Conrad suddenly caught a strange new scent mixed in with Mason’s natural perfume. Cautiously, he walked over to her and lifted her wrist to his nose, breathing deeply - lavender and sweet almonds, not unpleasant but definitely foreign.

“James, what’s wrong?” Mason wanted to know.

“Your scent... it’s changed,” Conrad revealed.

Worry morphed into understanding and then into a wide smile, “That makes sense, considering.”

“Considering what?”

Mason reached out and grabbed his hand, guiding it straight to her stomach, “Considering that I’m not the only one occupying this particular spot.”

“You’re pregnant?” Conrad asked in astonishment and when she nodded, he felt as if he were soaring without his wings. “We’re going to be parents. We’re going to have a baby!” 

“Yes.”

“I love you, Mason, I love you so much.”

Mason laughed in unadulterated delight, “I love you too.”

**************************************************************************

**THE END**

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, there will be a sequel to this story (four of them in fact). No, I don’t know when they will be finished and posted. Please don’t ask me.
> 
> Happy Holidays to everyone out there in the world and I hope you have a fantastic New Year!


End file.
